If you’re a keen poker player, the chances are that you like to play other online games too – but probably more for the fun of it than for serious money. Analysis of poker players shows that professional and semi-professional poker players enjoy the mental challenge more than the actual winning of cash.

In other words, the motivational drivers are more to do with personality and the sheer intellectual and character-based challenges of the game than they are about winning money. It’s simply that the money (though important in its own right) happens to be the "scoring system" we use.

Similarly, poker tends to appeal to typically male characteristics more than female – ergo; there are far more poker players who are men than women. Poker is about pitting one’s wits in a zero-sum contest to see who come out as the winner. Ultimately, in some poker contests as famously dramatized in “The Cincinnati Kid” movie with Steve McQueen and Edward G Robinson, there is one ultimate winner only. So this appeals to the typical male homo-sapiens’ driven desires to become alpha male.

But when it comes to switching off and relaxing between games – the serious poker players find this is difficult and they enjoy a little “intellectual-lite” challenge – and this often includes playing online slots. The challenges with online slot machine game, though, are far less about innate character and analysis and strategy etc., than they are about simply having fun to relax. So poker players tend to make their way to sites where the games are fun, not too serious, but not too simplistic either.

And given that their drivers are cash as the points scoring basis of online poker, they also tend towards sites where it makes economic sense to play. So this mean going to sites where the welcome bonuses are generous – or simply playing the games for the fun of doing so without the involvement of any cash whatsoever, but still with a scoring system of sorts.

This, perhaps, helps explain why certain sites such as Jackpotjoy are doing so well with free slots via Facebook. The only money changing hands here is virtual coinage – but there are numerous clever aspects to all the slots games which are intellectually challenging without being too long and drawn out or “over the top” in this regard.